We're all going on a - no, hang on

Apparently we're not very good at organising this thing called a "holiday", Beloved and I.

He had some leave to use up in the first half of the year, so booked off the last week of June. (Yup, that would be this week.) I decided on a whim to do the same. We arranged to borrow Esteemed Father's car for this (upcoming) weekend.

The weather was looking good. I got all giddy with anticipation and considered the multitude of possibilities open to us: road trip to... Peak District? Bath? Durham? All these delightful and unknown places! And that was just the weekend. We still had a whole week to fill in. A little net surfing and I was thinking that since I still have my Schengen visa* a quick sojourn in Dublin, say, or Amsterdam, was definitely appealing. Mm, Amsterdam. Get in touch with my Dutch roots**. Look at pretty pictures and, er, tulips. Eat cheese. All that.

Then I looked at my diary. And realised that slap bang in the middle of this week were:
1) A lunch meeting to discuss a potential freelance project***; and
2) An actual freelance project, to a very tight deadline, agreed to months ago.

So much for Amsterdam. But the weekend road trip was still looking good. Weather continued fine. We even received a rash catsitting offer.

But you know what the rule is, right? When you've been working too hard, for too long, what happens the instant your leave rolls around?

Bingo.

Beloved is down with the lurgi.

And the skies have opened.

And that urgent freelance project, well, the timing has shifted a little - to right over the weekend.

_____
* A trophy of high value: costing little in money but much in bureaucratic frustration, and allowing free travel throughout Europe for six months. Therefore, once one has been granted, the desire to exploit it with weekly city breaks can rapidly overwhelm common sense and financial prudence.
** Dutch. Not Afrikaans. No one in my family is Afrikaans. My maternal grandparents, however, were Dutch immigrants. I'd just like to make this clear. Not all South Africans are Afrikaans. Thank you.
*** Which I'd probably be insane to take on anyway, but I almost certainly will. Because I'm stupid like that.